Abstract
Keywords
To begin, I will introduce the contribution that Professor’s Komšić’s theory of social pulsation makes to the tradition of sociological theory from within the context of Talcott Parsons’ theory of social action. Parsons is an unpopular theorist in the United States and the world, but he gave a gift to analytical sociology drawing upon the works of Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, and Alfred Marshall. The gift was a theoretically strong, empirical account of social action, which sociologists in the United States inadequately appreciated but which Jürgen Habermas deeply appreciated. Parsons insisted that sociological inquiry study social action, not social behavior. The smallest unit of analysis for a sociological inquiry is social action, and nothing smaller. Social behavior, as the dominant frame in psychology, is less than social action. Behavior is a reductionistic account of social action. For sociologists to be who they are to be, Parsons insisted they examine social action.
The structure of social action involves first, an actor; second, an end; third, a means or conditions over which the actor has control; fourth, a situation, an empirical reality over which the actor has no control; and fifth, a normative orientation. A normative orientation need not be moral. Some ‘eat to live.’ This is a normative orientation. Others ‘live to eat.’ This is another normative orientation resulting in a social action of a different character. Some ‘love to work.’ Others ‘work to love.’ To understand social action, we must take into account the normative orientation along with the other four elements of social action. Focusing on social behavior, psychology ignores the normative orientation, focusing on something less social than social action. Parsons’ theory of the structure of social action was an important contribution to analytical sociology.
I want to introduce the contribution of Komšić’s theory of social pulsation in this context. Komšić’s theorizing exposes a significant problem in Parsons’ sociological work. There are five components of social action, and then there is social action as a whole, as a unit of analysis. What is the relation between the parts and the whole? As a philosopher, Parsons wants to say the relation between the parts and the whole is dialectical, that the parts are empowered within the whole and the whole is realized through the parts. As an empirical social scientist, Parsons wants to say that the relation between the parts and the whole are causal. Neither the philosophical nor the empirical account is satisfactory. Parsons glosses the following questions: What moves the parts of social action to see themselves as a part of social action as the unit of analysis? What moves the whole, the unit of social action, to realize its parts as necessary? The questions are neglected in Parsons’ work, and they are the questions that Professor Komšić’s theory of social pulsation takes up. The relation between the parts and the whole is not static; the relation is one of pulsation. Pulsation explains how an actor, a goal, a means, a circumstance, and a normative orientation realize themselves as part of the unit of social action. In turn, pulsation explains how social action, as the unit of analysis, engages its parts as a part of itself.
Komšić judiciously reviews leading figures in the tradition of modern social thought, such as Habermas and Alfred Schutz, through the lens of the sociology of social pulsation, and I will focus on the issue raised here through his review of George Herbert Mead’s theory of the self. Professor Komšić’s analysis of Mead’s sociology is keen and, to my mind, surpasses the secondary sources on Mead’s sociology of the self. Mead formulates the structure of the self as cognitive rather than emotional, as a structured relation between a self’s ‘I’ and a self’s ‘me.’ On the one hand, the self’s ‘I’ is spontaneous. It is not estimable. The self’s ‘I’ is connected directly to experience, the reality of experience. An example would be a Freudian slip. The part of the self responsible for the generation of a Freudian slip is the self’s ‘I.’ On the other hand, the self’s ‘me’ develops its relation to reality indirectly through the process of taking the role of the other, whether an individual, a family, a community, a nation, or a society, which Mead speaks of as the generalized other. The self’s ‘me’ develops the self. Through taking the role of the other, the self matures. The Golden Rule (do unto others as you would have them do unto you) is a prescription advising the self to take the role of the other as it expects the other to take its role. The prescription itself is what Mead calls the generalized other. The Golden Rule, if one will, operationalizes the principle of good will.
The ‘I’ and the ‘me’ are each important components of a self. If a self is constituted by just the ‘me’ and no ‘I,’ we have what Theodor Adorno called an authoritarian personality, one who takes the role of a fascist and follows it exclusively and unconditionally. If the self is constituted by just an ‘I’ and no ‘me,’ we have a narcissistic individual, hardly more than an animal. The ‘I’ and the ‘me’ need each other to be each other, but Mead does not explain why.
Mead avoids addressing what grounds the ‘I’ and the ‘me’s’ relation to each other. The self is an organic identity; it is not a mechanical identity. At the same time, the self exemplifies creativity and routinization. Mead evades the following questions: What moves the ‘I’ to become a part of the ‘me’ by taking the role of another, without losing its character as an ‘I’? How does the ‘I’ lose itself to the ‘me’ if only then to recover itself as an ‘I’? In turn, what opens the ‘me’ to the intrusion of the unreflective and impulsive ‘I’ without losing its character as a ‘me’? What moves the ‘me’ to see it needs the ‘I’ as what the ‘I’ is and not as what the ‘me’ is? This second sightedness of the ‘I’ and this second sightedness of the ‘me’ are a subject that Mead evades. These questions, however, are the questions that the theory of pulsation takes up. Komšić’s work turns Mead’s static dichotomy into a life-affirming dynamic, a pulsating dynamic. This dynamic is the art of living, the art of living in a society, the art of social action.
Professor Komšić theorized the theory of social pulsation after Bosnia-Herzegovina suffered unfathomable and immeasurable violence. Not only were houses destroyed, but also the prestige of the home. Not only were women and children killed, but the city itself, its rituals and ways of life. Not only was a nation of people devastated, but also its places of worship, its history, and its collective memory. Not only was a social system demolished, but also the society and its social institutions. In the first case, the violence is called domicide; in the second, urbicide; in the third, genocide; and in the fourth, sociocide.
There is, however, something invincible about society, something that cannot be killed. There is something ever-living about society, something about society in itself making it thus impossible to kill society. Sociocide is not an accurate description of what happened during the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Sociocide instead is an ideal type, a Weberian ideal type, used to explain social phenomena during the war without being the social phenomena being explained.
The theory of social pulsation explains why sociocide did not happen, why sociocide failed, and why sociocide, in fact, can never truly occur. Social pulsation is the lifeblood of a society, which is something sociocide cannot stop. This study is not only for Bosnia-Herzegovina but also for the places where societies, for whatever reason, suffer unconscionable violence and devastating destruction of traditional social networks and social capital. Social pulsation evokes the immortal character of a society, albeit in an empirical and historical frame.
For whom is the theory of social pulsation? Who is empowered by this new sociology? Millennials is a term used to describe the social and political characteristics of those born between 1980 and 2004. Millennials live with and are raised by computers with internet connections. Facebook and social media are the public spaces they have mastered. The pulsating nature of the internet thus frames and gives meaning to the millennials’ life-world.
Millennials have witnessed unconscionable and cynical acts of bad faith in the political and economic realms, both nationally and globally. They have watched how communities were reformed and then deformed. Somehow, millennials not only persevere but thrive. When there are no clear paths in the social structure to follow, millennials exemplify a compelling sense of reflexiveness and innovation which appears to be apolitical only to older generations. Social pulsation is the sociological window through which to understand how it is that millennials are open but decisive, concrete but universal, and creative but pragmatic. The work of creative reason, the means of their social action, structures their new intentions. In terms of social action, millennials lay down their own tracks at the same time their train travels these tracks. The inner logic of their social action is not linear, but pulsating.
We have here a sociologist from what is called the silent generation, a generation known for being able to make the best of a bad situation, providing a wondrous sociology for the generation referred to as millennials. I commend Komšić for this achievement and important contribution to sociological theory. He is one of the first to provide an adequate sociology for the life-world and needs of today’s leading and most important generation.